Losing A Best Friend
by Irish Bug
Summary: For so long Cornelius has felt like he lost his best friend, even though he is right there beside him. Short ONE-SHOT about Cornelius's feelings watching Wilbur grow up without knowing of thier incredible friendship.


_All right. I wanted to write this little one shot for a while. And since I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO until my 3D Graphics class, Ima gunna start it. ;) A lot of time between Astronomy and 3D Graphics will probably be spent writing. Yay!_

"My little boy." I whisper as my beautiful wife holds our new born baby in her arms. "That little rascal."

"Little rascal?" she inquires.

"Nothing." I chuckle. "He's just going to grow up to be a wily one. I can tell."

"Honey, how can you judge his character now? He's not even a day old!"

"Just trust me, baby." I smile, leaning over the hospital bed to kiss my wife.

"Whatever you say." She laughs. "Here. Hold him."

As I take him up in my arms I begin to feel a little nervous. I turn the little bundle around and make direct contact with the sparkling brown eyes I knew so well.

My wife smiles as tears begin to well up in my own eyes. She sees the pride of a father who has just received the miracle of his first son. What she does not know is that the true reason for my tears is much more painful.

…

"Wilbur, you silly little thing!" Franny giggles as her five-year-old son comes toddling up to her. Boy was he learning fast.

"All ready running." I say proudly.

"He's a fast learner." Franny grins. "A smart one, just like his father!"

I let out a laugh at this comment. Sure he had learned his motor skills well, but his common sense skills were going to take a lot longer.

"What's so funny?" Franny asks.

"Absolutely nothing." I smile.

"You confuse me sometimes, Cornelius." She says, standing up and hugging me around the shoulders. Suddenly I feel a slight tug at my leg and look down to see my little Wilbur pulling on my pants.

"Don't feel left out." I say, picking up my son. "I love you too, kiddo."

"I'll go get some lunch ready, all right?" Franny says. "You guys have some father-son time."

She smiles and leaves the room.

Father son time. That's something that I had never thought of having with Wilbur. When I think of time with Wilbur, I always think of crazy adventures through time with my best friend.

I look right into those beautiful brown eyes that he got from his mother and he smile.

"It's all ready crooked." I say, remembering thirteen-year-old Wilbur's quirky smile.

…

"Dad, it's almost time!"

"All right, I'm coming!"

I race across the house and into the kitchen.

"Carl?" I pant. I need to work out more. "Do you have a lunch for Wilbur?"

"Of course I do!" Carl says. "And I threw in a little extra candy. If that's okay?"

"Of course it is!" I smile, catching my breath. "The first day of fourth grade is very important. He deserves a little extra."

I smile as I leave the kitchen to find Wilbur standing in front of the door with his brand new Captain Time Travel back pack. I stop at the site of his new matching shirt.

The sleek t-shirt with that oh-so-familiar logo hung down past the waist of my young son and the sleeves were baggy over his arms. I smiled inside and out. He is really going to love that shirt.

"Took you long enough." He mutters sarcastically.

"Sorry, kid." I laugh, ruffling his hair. "That's a nice shirt. You should hold on to it for a while."

"What if I grow out of it?" He says.

"That'll take a while, don't you think?"

"I hope so. I really like this shirt."

"Well, it looks amazing for your first day of school."

"Thank you."

My goodness, he is so big. Look at him! He's staring to look like the Wilbur I knew from so long ago. Suddenly I feel my eyes starting to get all teary the same way they had when he was first born.

"Dad, don't get all mushy. It's just the fourth grade."

"It's not that." I wipe the dew from my eyes. "Come on, let's go."

…

"Cornelius, when are you coming to bed?" Franny asks from the end of the hall.

"Soon, I promise, honey."

"All right. I'll see you soon."

As she turns around and walks into our bedroom, I walk in the opposite direction toward our son's. I open the door and here a thump. I step back quickly, hoping I hadn't woken him up. When it is clear that he is still asleep, I push the door open slowly to move whatever I had hit.

It was just his favorite sneakers on the floor, just like all his dirty clothes.

I walk over to his bed and look down at my boy. I can't believe he's a teenager now.

As I looked at his sleeping face I finally realized that this really was the Wilbur I knew. It hit me like a ton of bricks in that instance that I had made it through all these years with my best friend right beside me and he never even known. All the time I had wanted to tell him everything. But I knew that it could have ruined everything if I had.

A tear slides down my face right onto his. I recoil, hoping again that he won't wake.

"Dad?" He mutters as he turns around to see me there crying. I must look pretty pathetic.

"Dad, what's wrong?"

"N-nothing." I whisper and wipe the tears from my face. "It's just… I don't know."

"Dad." He whispers as he gets up and hugs me. "It's OK. You won't be gone that long."

"What?" I ask, being still so caught up in my thoughts.

"Your trip tomorrow." He says. "You won't be gone too long. You'll come back and everything will be back to normal! You won't miss us that much."

"That's right." I say. "My business trip…"

My business trip!

"Right, you'll be fine."

_The _business trip!

"Right, I'll be fine."

I don't think I've ever grinned so wide in my life.

"I will be fine!"

I grab my son and hug him like I'd only hugged him once before, a long time ago.

"I'll come back and everything will be absolutely wonderful!"

"Um… right." Wilbur says, obviously a bit frightened that his father is going insane.

"Thank you for that reminder!"

In my excitement I turn around and speed off toward my bedroom. I really just want to get to sleep so I can get this business trip over with.

"You're welcome?" Wilbur mutters down the hall. He won't be confused for much longer.

…

_Yeah, OK. I could've written that so much more dramatic… Maybe I'll try again when I'm not running on a few hours of sleep and Jack in the Box food. Ugh. (:_

_Now, let's talk time travel, shall we?_

_Logically, since Lewis helped Goob to catch the ball in the end of the movie, he never would be the creepy Bowler Hat Guy that we all adore and would never have a motive to go back and ruin Lewis's life. Therefore, Wilbur would never have a reason to go back in time and meet Lewis and the whole thing never would've happened. So there's a paradox that would basically just… Well, it can't happen. But let's say that maybe it didn't happen, but… like… parallel time stream theory, OK? So it happened the first time around but not the second. Therefore Lewis would remember, but once Wilbur is 13 he will not be going back to meet Lewis because Goob never became BHG and never stole the time machine. But… logically… Lewis would never know that Wilbur was his best friend because Wilbur never went back in time to begin with and now I'm just right back to what I said in the first place. It's impossible, I'm sure ya'll have figured that out. But what I want to know (why I'm ranting so dang much) is if you would like to see a one shot of Cornelius being all sad that it's never going to happen and they are never going to be best friends. I think it would be good to write. But there's the obvious factor that it's completely impossible. I just want to know… Do you think people would flame me for doing that? Because I think I can make that more dramatic than this one... which couldn't happen, either. Practically nothing on could happen. It would've been better for fan fiction is Lewis never helped Goob in the end, huh? Because now we have to write through the fact that technically Wilbur is never going to have a reason to go back. We just ignore that, don't we? Haha! Time travel geeks like ME get all ranty, though! Breathes heavily But helping Goob did good for warm and fuzzies. That's all that matters. Wow, that's a long rant. I'm done. Thank you and good night._


End file.
